{"id":375,"date":"2007-10-09T19:45:00","date_gmt":"2007-10-09T19:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/2007\/10\/09\/the-20-year-reunion\/"},"modified":"2014-12-14T18:49:04","modified_gmt":"2014-12-14T18:49:04","slug":"the-20-year-reunion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/2007\/10\/09\/the-20-year-reunion\/","title":{"rendered":"The 20-Year Reunion"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p> $\"\"$ <\/a>I generally try to keep non-professional stuff to a minimum over here, but this crosses over somewhat. So I attended my 20-Year High School Reunion this past weekend (for the record, Oliver Wendell Holmes High School in San Antonio). I didn\u2019t want to go, but my longtime friend Tom Kustelski talked me into it. Very surreal, but it was great to hang out with him and his wife Ann, and I\u2019m glad Traci and I were there. Looking back twenty years, I definitely wasn\u2019t amongst the most popular folks in high school, and I definitely wasn\u2019t amongst the sexiest. My friends tended to be the geeks and the nerds and I suspect I got labeled the same, for better or worse. Finishing with the 3rd best GPA in a class of 600 probably didn\u2019t help. They were good years, but I don\u2019t feel too many Uncle Rico moments where I wax nostalgically about them. So back to the reunion, about 200-250 people showed up, and it was good to hear how many folks went on to success. Kevin Jackson has a PHD and is proffing at the University of Illinois; more folks than I can count have large, prosperous families; and of course, my buddy Tom is doing well enough that he\u2019s already thinking about retiring to Colorado in a few years. Lawyers, doctors, designers, CEOs\u2026.you name it\u2026the whole gamut. So toward the end of the evening, they announced the \u201cClass Favorites,\u201d including \u201cMost Successful.\u201d When they got to that one\u2026.whoda thunk it\u2026.but they called my name and I had to walk up to the stage, more than a bit stunned. The tradeoff is I had to wear a sash that said \u201cMost Successful\u201d and I was bestowed with a lovely bottle of Boone\u2019s Farm Strawberry Hill wine. Too funny. As my wife wisely said that night, \u201cSuccess is measured a lot of different ways.\u201d I wish I would\u2019ve known that twenty years ago.\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I generally try to keep non-professional stuff to a minimum over here, but this crosses over somewhat. So I attended my 20-Year High School Reunion this past weekend (for the record, Oliver Wendell Holmes High School in San Antonio). I didn\u2019t want to go, but my longtime friend Tom Kustelski talked me into it. Very […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":920,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-conventions"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/03\/COVERSTORY.jpg?fit=480%2C617","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5te7x-63","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}